An Epic Rap Battle Retrospective, Part 8

So, where did I leave off?

“Next week, though, I’m going to finish discussing season four.”

Uh… oops.

Anyway, last time on the Epic Rap Battles, I was describing my issue with the second of the five-way battles, featuring five directors including the often criticized Michael Bay.  Incidentally, what does Michael do when he wants to exit a building?

Anyway, this week, it’s time to look at some of the absolute best battles of the entire series, if for no other reason than they’re the next ones on the list.  You may notice I haven’t listed any particular lines that stand out, and that’s because there are far too many good lyrics to choose from here.

 

Lewis and Clark vs. Bill and Ted

I’ve come to the realization lately that, despite my love for science fiction, I like fantasy better.  A lot of my reading habits these days has been either urban fantasy like Patricia Briggs’ books about Mercy Thompson and Ilona Andrews’ books about Kate Daniels, straight up medieval fantasy like Spice & Wolf, or furry fiction like Beast Complex and Tempe O’Kun’s Windfall.  But I do like science fiction too, or else I wouldn’t have enjoyed The Starlight Barking enough to write about it a couple weeks ago.

When it comes to stoner comedies, they can be hit and miss, depending on how stupid the stories get.  I don’t mind Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle since the main quest of the film is to go and eat at White Castle and it’s hilarious that such a simple directive is a lot harder than it should be, with crazy antics like getting a cheetah high and then riding their newly tamed mount.  It’s basically a mundane action taken to larger than life extremes and that’s why I like it.  The follow-up wis about a larger than life situation (the titular duo get detained because they accidentally make it sound like they have a bomb on board an airplane) and end up getting into more of the same antics.  It isn’t as satisfying to me.

Sometimes, you go into a stoner comedy like Dude, Where’s My Car?, expecting that the characters will be exploring what they did the night before and that they got so stoned that they no longer remember what happened.  Then you find out nope, you’ve actually seen this story before on Star Trek: The Next Generation and/or Red Dwarf, and The Hangover plays it closer to your original expectations anyway with 100% less aliens, so you might as well watch it instead.  Plus, the inclusion of a tiger gives The Hangover an additional edge.  I’m not trying to be down on science fiction, but I do believe there’s a time and place.

Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure is that time and place.  What makes it great is that the grand unfolding of history that leads to the utopia of 2688 is all dependent upon Bill and Ted applying themselves to their education for once and passing their history class.  The entire time travel plot is in the movie from the start and is basically just there so the pair can do their homework.  But can Rufus get two slackers to finish their assignment or is the entire future doomed?

I think the Bill and Ted series approaches its science fiction angle a lot better than Dude, Where’s My Car? does.  Time travel can be overdone and can be used as too much of a get out of plot free card (like, for example, the season finale of Star Trek: Voyager), but it seems to work out here.

This is probably the only time in the entire Epic Rap Battles series that they justify putting modern participants against historical figures, because you can imagine the one set of opponents traveled through time to meet the other.  It’s perfect, really.  And the number of historical figures present in the background of this video makes it seem like maybe Bill and Ted helped bring together a number of other participants.  No idea how they would’ve put fictional characters together with real people unless Rick and Morty show up in a later season.

I hope they don’t show up in a later season.

 

David Copperfield vs. Harry Houdini

I love it when Peter and Lloyd play around with the format of their rap battles a little bit.  At this point, they’d established a few silly patterns in their videos, like one where occasionally a new challenger appears, mainly done during a five-way battle.  I think they must’ve been self-aware of this by the time they made this video, so they couldn’t resist bringing Criss Angel in for five seconds and making it sound like he was going to go all Vladimir Lenin on them before dismissing him entirely.

A magician five-way might’ve also included illusionists like Penn & Teller, although Penn would’ve done all the talking, and now that I think about it, it would be hilarious to have Penn & Teller show up in a future rap battle, maybe against Sigfried & Roy, and Teller does all the work while Penn does all the rapping.  I think it would be funny.

I would also look forward to the tigers.  Obviously they would be added in post, like the flying wolf at the end of Nice Peter vs. EpicLLOYD in season one, but it would still be awesome to see.

I love watching magic shows.  You probably won’t be surprised to know this, considering I also like the fantasy genre.  There’s something awesome about watching people use sleight of hand and other such tricks to convince an audience that there’s something mystical going on when the actual explanation is a bit more mundane.  Have you seen the video of David Copperfield walking through the Great Wall of China?  It’s an amazing trick, but it’s just that, a trick.  I know how it’s done, but the theatre involved to get people to believe he can actually walk through a solid landmark is amazing to watch.

My favourite illusion is this one, where Teller prunes a flower by cutting its shadow.  If there’s an explanation of how to do it, I’ve refused to look it up because I’d rather not have its magic ruined.  Its simplicity and lack of over the top theatrics is what makes it beautiful to watch.

Similarly beautiful is David Copperfield’s story about the first time he ever saw snow.  I think that’s what I like about Teller’s flower as well.  My favourite magic tells a story as much as it entertains.

 

Terminator vs. RoboCop

I don’t think I’ve seen the entirety of The Terminator, although I’ve seen Terminator 2: Judgment Day, and I’m aware of how the franchise has fallen since then.  Have you noticed that the date of Judgment Day gets pushed back every time we survive it in the real world?  They always want it to seem like our future is uncertain.  For example, in the first two films, released in 1984 and 1991, Judgment Day was going to occur on August 29, 1997.  That was when the missiles were going to be launched and the world destroyed, humanity brought to the brink of destruction.  Actions in the second film were originally thought to have prevented the event, but the third film (it was made after 1997, by the way) proposed that the day was only delayed, taking place instead in July 2003.

Currently, an unspecified date in the 2020s is considered the new Judgment Day, although it feels like Cyberdyne Systems and Skynet aren’t really credible threats anymore, since they’ve been defeated many times by now and Judgment Day continues to be pushed back.  If they make another film in the franchise after the year 2030, you can bet that Judgment Day is going to be pushed back even further.

I was going to say that RoboCop managed to avoid the kind of franchise rot that happened to The Terminator, but then I found out there was an animated series.  And a live action series.  And there’s going to be a new sequel that does what Terminator: Dark Fate tried to do and ignore the crappy parts of the franchise.  Oh, and there was a soft reboot/remake that did what Terminator: Genisys tried to do.  Wow, so it’s like the one franchise was deliberately modeled after the other.  This is a very appropriate pairing indeed.

 

Lao Tzu, Sun Tzu and Confucius vs. Nietzsche, Socrates and Voltaire

And here’s the big one of the latter half of season four.  Six rappers, three on three, and it isn’t even the season finale.

It’s probably inevitable that both sides begin to squabble amongst themselves rather than continue the rap battle, considering Sun Tzu’s contribution to the world was a book on military strategy that proposed alternate ways to undermine your opponents.  Confucius preferred kindness, justice and morality, among other virtues and Lao Tzu is considered the founder of Taoism, which teaches how one can find harmony with the universe.  In other words, two of the world’s most peaceful philosophers are on the same team with someone who’s mind is tuned more towards defeating opponents.

Many readers of this blog might be familiar with Nietzsche, even if only by proxy thanks to the Xenosaga.  After difficulties continuing the original Xenogears project (plus, the original game wasn’t able to reach the full scope of its ambition during its two year development time), the original creators of Xenogears developed a related but ultimately different project called Xenosaga for a different publisher.  The games would feature German subtitles taken from the works of Nietzsche, and ultimately three of the six proposed games were made.

So this makes me wonder what the other three titles would’ve been.  After studying the list of Nietzsche’s books, I propose that the games would’ve been called Xenosaga Episode IV: Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik, Xenosaga Episode V: Zur Genealogie der Moral and Xenosaga Episode VI: Götzen-Dämmerung.  The final title, German for “Twilight of the Idols”, here meaning false gods, seems extra appropriate.

Sadly, we live in a universe where these games don’t exist.  Hmm, I wonder if I can borrow Bill and Ted’s phone booth to restore these three titles to the timeline.

 

Shaka Zulu vs. Julius Caesar

Have you ever wondered who would actually win, Shaka or Caesar?  This question has been posed a few times already, and it seems to depend on who’s delivering the answer, although Reddit heavily favours the Romans.

So I dug around until I found my Nintendo DS copy of Civilization Revolution, which is the only game in the series I actually own, although I’ve played other games in the series in the past.

Shaka appears as the leader of the Zulu, whereas Caesar appears as the leader of the Romans.  It seems like a no brainer to start a game and not wage war against either the Zulu or the Romans and see who actually wins, right?

Unfortunately, it’s not that simple.  The game chooses your opponents at random, it seems, and you don’t find out who they are until you encounter them in the course of your travels.  After an hour of playing, I finally knew the identities of all of my opponents: the Aztecs, Germans, Russians and Indians.  Given that it’s already Monday evening and I would rather not put off posting this for another week, this is one question that will have to remain unanswered, for now.  Spending an hour at a time before finding out that the game randomly chose civilizations other than the Zulu and Romans, and then resetting to try again seems like an inefficient way to figure out who would be better.  Maybe if I’d thought to try this earlier, it wouldn’t be as much of a problem, but for now, I’d better put the game away and focus on other battles.

For now.

 

Jim Henson vs. Stan Lee

Compared to other season finales, this seems less than epic at first glance.  The first season ended with “the final battle” between the creators of the Epic Rap Battles of History, the second season ended with a Russian five-way.  The third season ended with a four vs. four battle and season four ends with… a standard battle between two opponents.  No one interrupts half way, there aren’t any partners to up the stakes, this is just a normal battle between Jim Henson and Stan Lee.

It’s almost suspicious how normal this is.

Then Stan Lee crosses a line.  To make amends, he admits that he misses Jim Henson and extends an olive branch to his opponent.  For the first time in the series, his opponent accepts the olive branch and starts singing the other’s praises.  It’s no longer a rap battle, it’s rap friendship and it looks like the fourth season is going to end on a hopeful note as Jim Henson and Stan Lee stand together, united.

Walt Disney suddenly appears, turning the season finale into such a frightening downer ending that it remains my favourite of the season finale videos to date.  Walt Disney is so frightening and dominant that neither Stan Lee nor Jim Henson are able to think of anything to say to him in response.

I’ve always wondered how Peter and Lloyd were able to get away with this since, as Disney stated in the song, he owns the Epic Rap Battles of History.  Yep, at this point in the series, the battles were owned by Maker Studios, and Maker Studios was owned by Disney, so I’ve always been worried that their criticism of the Walt Disney Company might’ve gotten them in trouble.

But then, I guess it depends on who’s saying it and how.  John Oliver is always criticizing AT&T and they haven’t retaliated against Last Week Tonight, as far as I can tell.  Hasan Minhaj started acknowledging a few of Netflix’s faults in the sixth season of Patriot Act, and I am convinced it wasn’t a coincidence that Netflix canned the show after that season.

Disney couldn’t have been that mad at Peter and Lloyd, judging by the very next battle in the series, but that’ll be a story for another time.